Denver vs. Jets - First Half

It's raining everywhere east of the Mississippi. In Cleveland, Foxboro, East Rutherford, and Philly, there are cold, black sheets of rain falling. It feels eerie. And all week, as the world was virtually crowning the Jets with the AFC Championship, I have felt nothing but profound unease. How many other seasons have the Jets been 8-3 at a Thanksgiving weekend?

The answer is three times: 1968, 1969 and 2004. Even with the 16-game season, there isn't that much change to report. In 1985 the Jets were 9-4 going into a 30-21 defeat on Turkey Day in Detroit. They were 10-3 going into the holiday weekend in 1986, a season that saw them then plummet helplessly the rest of the way. That's pretty much it. So when I saw the cover of The Sporting News, with Favre's victorious image and the phrase "Kings of NYC," I became uncomfortable in the way that the Professor on the unchartered desert isle does when he realizes that the antidote for the skin rash over which the survivors are glowing is not really the antidote. Despite their ridiculous wide receiver the Giants pummeled the energized Redskins, whereas the Jets have been behind all the first half against Denver. Two Jets turnovers have yielded Bronco touchdowns.

Day in the Jets Fan's Life - 11/27/82

A few days after Thanksgiving, we went to my cousin Will's house in New Rochelle. We had already spent the holiday dinner with his family, and now we back to eat the leftovers - the turkey sandwiches topped with stuffing. Will and I were born a month apart. He was essentially my very first friend, and we experienced life's transformations together. We got lost in Flushing Meadow Park together as toddlers. We smacked heads into each other and went unconscious one Christmas while running around Uncle Mike's apartment in the Village. We discovered a pen on the sidewalk that, when turned upside down, turn a clothed woman naked. We both fell in love with Jessica Lange in King Kong, and of the seven times we each saw it apiece the summer it came out, we went together twice to see Star Wars. And now it was time to journey into adolescence together. Three days after Thanksgiving, the Jets were playing Green Bay at Shea.

Just the week before, Dad had taken me and Charlie to see the Jets beat up on the Baltimore Colts 37-0 at Shea. It had been the week of professional football's return to action after a lengthy players' strike in 1982. The Jets looked and acted in that game like they were ready to conquer the world, particularly with Freeman McNeil who, before Marcus Allen, was the most impressive back in the AFC. It was a startlingly different experience from previous games I had been to. I had seen the Jets win at home against Miami and Baltimore in 1978, where they managed to squelch the other teams' rallies. I had seen the Jets manhandle the '76 Buccaneers at Shea, but that was routine treatment from everybody in the AFC the Bucs played that year. The Jets emerged from the the '82 strike with the pent-up energy of the break. They ran over the Colts as if hurrying toward the exits of a burning building. For a 13 year-old boy completely uncertain of everything, I took joy from watching a world-class bullying.

Back in New Rochelle, I was more meek and uncertain. Having grown up together for so long, Will and I could complete each other sentences, but we were also into increasingly disparate things. He kept using urban slang like "snap" and "fresh" that was alien to my cloistered little town. He listened to Iron Maiden whereas the peak of my adolescent musical rage would be The Who's Who's Next. Mostly I still listened to the Beatles. But we threw a football outside in his backyard, which felt awkward because everything felt awkward. But we tried.

Will was never a football fan, but like anyone who knew me, he was especially sensitive toward my obsessions. I probably talked about Freeman McNeil's extraordinary end around touchdowns to bookend the Jets win against the Colts. It was well known around our extended family that when I would visit on an autumn Sunday, someone would have to update me about a Jets game on TV or radio. I knew I had no place asking my hosts if I could watch or listen to the game instead of being a good guest and mixing and playing along. Mom would have had none of that kind of thing. I even knew enough to not mind.

So in the middle of our throwing the football around, talking about whatever 13 year-old boys talk about - possibly even girls - my father came outside to report that, in the third quarter, the Jets trailed the Packers 13-12 after a Mike Augustyniak run but that they would have been ahead by one point had Pat Leahy not missed two PAT's in the game. I reacted with an unspoken expression of hopelessness that Leahy's vexing problems with that elusive extra point conjured in Jets fans for years. The odd thing was that Leahy would keep writing postscripts to the tales of his insane placekicking by also winning enough games with the occasional field goal. In years to come, he would eventually be a lock on any kick anywhere. Actually, he would put up the winning field goal against the Packers that day. Still, in that particular moment, Dad's news of yet another Leahy foible was all there was of the Jets game. It seemed cruel. Will stared at me and said it best, exasperated at my look of torment.

"That's pathetic," he said.

"Yeah," I said, which felt awkward, but then everything felt that way.

Our 200th Post!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 200th post to Gang Green Land, formerly known as Sauer Lammons, formerly known as Gangreenous, formerly known as something else. I forget. Anyway, my name is Werblin Winner, and it gives me enormous pleasure to mark a milestone in the world of neurotic sports-related blogging by paying tribute to the life- culminating work of Martin E. Roche. Tonight we reflect on the laughter, the tears, the rage and general sense of apathy you and I have shared with each of Marty's entries about his life as a New York Jets fan. We've shared so much, cared so much, and now it's time to look at where we've been, where we are, and where we're going. Will you join me?

The audience responds appreciatively.

Let's get started!

The audience concurs.

With the buffet table! To the buffet! First come, first served! Last one there is ---

The buffet is stampeded. Martin looks around and wonders whose idea was the buffet table. In keeping with his blog, he wonders, "How long did I rent the hall for again?" aloud to no one in particular.

About an hour and a half later...

We're back! The veal was so-so, wasn't it? Who's up for a little chat with the blog's flounder, Martin Roche. Founder. I meant "founder."

A gentle smattering of applause.

Thanks. Thanks. That's very funny.

Martin for two years you've squandered your time outlining the life experiences of being a New York Jets fan. Has it taught you anything important about life?

Only that there is always something on the web to keep you from wanting to kill yourself with drink. Even stuff that doesn't have anything to do with pornography.

I can hardly believe that. (Much canned laughter.) Is this your life's work?

I hope not.

Do you have any children?

No.

Pets?

No. My wife wants a dog someday.

Gee, how nice. And what do you do in the off-season, Marty? When you're not worrying about your football team?

I work on NYJBTN, the all-time listing of Jets players by their numbers. Each player who has ever played for the Jets gets an entry. We're about a quarter of the way through. We'll continue near the end of the Jets' season. Whenever that is.

Right, right. What number are you up to?

Twenty-eight. The last entry was for Curtis Martin.

And he's like...an important player, right?

(Groans from the audience.)

Well, I don't know! I studied theater at B.U about twenty years ago. What the hell do I know about football?

(Lusty boos. Someone says "Belichick sucks!!")
Yes, yes. Say, Marty isn't there already a "Mets-By-The-Numbers" site? Did you steal the idea from them?

Yes.

Oh. OK. Um...lessee what the card says. Uh...

Oh. Say, Marty, would you like to check in the latest e-mail you've gotten at your web address: edlsjets@hotmail.com?

No.

OK, terrific! Apparently a Mr. Martin Oumar writes that "YOUR URGENT RESPONSE IS NEEDED!!" Isn't that nice? You've got the same first name. And Mr. Usman Abdul wants "AN OVERSEAS PARTNER!!" Well, don't we all? The UK NATIONAL LOTTERY says "Congratulations Lucky Contestant!" They mean you, Marty. Isn't that exciting?

Great.

And a man named only "Frank" has an investment proposal for you. That doesn't happen every day. Sounds intriguing! And someone named Amudu Hassan has written to you with the subject line, "From Dr Amudu Hassan, VERY URGENT PLEASE!!" My goodness, Marty. Sounds serious! You'd better try getting back to him. He might need help.

I'm sure he does.

OK. Well, here's to another 200 blog posts on the joys of quilting, or whatever it is you write about. This is Werblin Winner saying good night! Oh wait...LOOK. One of these e-mails is addressed from "Claim Officer" to "Hi Winner!!" Marty! You didn't tell me that I was getting e-mails forwarded to you.

Well, now you know.

Jets 34 Titans 14

Before this game began, I took this photograph of myself, wearing my Namath greens. The shot's most prominent feature is, of course, the index finger pointing somewhat obnoxiously at the viewer. The picture unwittingly conveys my own mixed sense of hesitation and hope. I thought I might try to communicate some enthusiasm before an important football game during this most unusual Jets season. But to be honest with you, it's difficult to hide years of disappointment. I'm sort of gesturing like, You guys better not be getting me excited over nothing. I'm freakin' warning you guys!

And yet, realistically, I knew that this was going to be a tough game. How could it not be? Keith Bulluck alone frightened me. And though last year's Patriots would have manhandled this year's Titans of Tennessee, I did not think the modern manifestation of the Titans of New York would escape a late fourth quarter Jeff Fisher drive. The worst was realizing that if the Jets didn't beat the Oiler-Titans then Tennessee would probably go 14-0, if not 16-0, so light is their second-half schedule. And that just wouldn't have been right. Mercury Morris would have just about lost his mind. And I right with him.

But break out the champagne, Nick Buoniconti. Have the Jets been the spoiler of an undefeated season (other than their own) ever before? I don't think so. I would like to have my crack GGL team work on that one. Anyway, this was one of those days where I was forced to follow the game online. Again, I don't know if I enjoyed this win more following it online than I would have had I watched it on the set. There are lots of complicated emotions at work here. If the Jets are on a good drive downfield, do I feel less stress if it's just manifesting itself as a series of arrows and markers on a green field that looks like the old NFL Strategy board game? Yes. Why? Does it really matter?

And what was on CBS-3 TV in Philly? Well, nothing football-related, actually. No one wanted to compete with Fox's coverage of the Eagles, even when the home team play as bad as they did against the Ravens. This is one of those seasons where the Eagles are like a bickering, unhappy family who are making everybody at a reunion picnic incredibly uncomfortable. One was almost tempted to watch CBS Sports' coverage of rodeo at 2:30 pm instead. On public access was a paid programming infomercial that outlined the most successful ways that you - with just a minimal investment - can profit many times over from the epidemic foreclosures across our nation. Is there a better candidate for Hell than the twisted amoral f@#$ who came up with that little idea? Happy Holidays! Now you can buy up homes and turn their former owners into your servants before flipping the house and turning them out onto the street! Ah, America.

But what of the Jets game? The story is the exuberant Favre, the irrepressible Leon Washington, the consistent and determined Mr. Jones and the best draft choice at tight end in Dustin Keller that the Jets have ever, ever, ever had. Kyle Brady? Silence! Johnny Mitchell? Howls of derisive laughter!! But how fantastic was the defense? Well, actually it did precisely the job it needed for the 20 minutes of game time that were required for them to play. Twenty minutes. Beyond that, the offense controlled the ball and the entire game. I kept following it online thinking there was some kind of delay in the f@#$ing wireless again, but there was none. "Wait," I thought. "The Jets don't still have the ball, do they?" Surely it was an "optical gallusion," as a somewhat lower level student of mine described the picture on the cover of his copy of The Great Gatsby on Friday. You be the judge.

No and no, but thanks for sharing. The Jets simply kept the ball and controlled the clock the way the '90 Giants did against the Bills. Keep it, run it, throw short passes. This Brian Schottenheimer is some kind of genius, isn't he?

Well...maybe. Are you just joining us? Would you like me to delineate the host of blown expectations for the Jets over the years? I hope the answer is no. I'm tired - really tired of doing that. Instead here is your offensive captain speaking of his afternoon in Nashville:

"We didn't think we could dominate them in the running game or the passing game, and in all honesty, we did both," said Brett Favre after the game. We didn't think we could...(but) we did both. Do both again, boys. For the love of God. Do both again.

****

In the midst of my postgame meditations, I got that confirmation that this was a Big Game - a phone call from Dad, the fallen-away season tickets holder from the 60's and 70's. He has never spent too much of his time devoted to watching Brett Favre over the years, but he mentioned that the Jets hadn't quite had a QB like Favre since Namath, and obviously he is correct. To compare the two is misleading on one level. Favre is a much better quarterback at 39 than Namath was at 33. And no one since Joe Willie for the Jets can even compare to Namath. Recall if you will Todd, O'Brien, Ryan, O'Donnell, Testeverde, Lucas, Pennington. Some better than others, obviously. No. Even if he had more interceptions than touchdowns, it was Joe's style that made the permanent mark. And though Brett Favre doesn't wear fur coats, Joe Namath's insistence on playing in his own style and in his own way, his throwing with abandon, his refusal to abide by sensible quarterbacking standards - all of this is embodied in Brett Favre. That's what got Dad excited about the Jets in the first place - their unconventional style of play. Brett Favre's fake, fade and hurl to Laverneus Coles for the 20-3 lead in the Titans game was a microcosm of all of those little, weird idiosyncratic things of which a genius is capable.

A Day in the Jets Fan's Life - 11/22/92

I entered graduate school with the idea that I was someday going to be a successful professor of English, maybe somewhere pastoral. Someday I would wear a tweed jacket with suede patches. I would table classes in semi-circle at a table in the library basement. I would be a walking brain with a drinking problem and a wandering eye, and I would be the father of three dysfunctional children with names like Brecht, Ibsen, and Goronwy. I would be an acclaimed critic of the English language. This I imagined at all of 23.

We were told that all of the old professors from the New Critical age were going to retire right about the time that I was graduating of college. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was acting out of some kind of foresight. The thing I wanted to do seemed like the right thing to choose, even in the midst of another, earlier Bush economic downturn. The only trouble was that it was all an illusion; there were no vacancies opening, only ones disappearing altogether. The American economy had seen industrial jobs disappearing overseas for decades, and now it was time for academia to do the same. Only this time college courses would not be taught by Mexican or Bengali workers but by teaching assistants and adjuncts - a new reality I discovered when I became a graduate student at Temple University and a T.A. with a full teaching load earning less than minimum wage. That was a bad sign. Still, illusions die hard. I didn't give up right away on my dream. I did eventually, but not right away.

It started the night I listened to the Jets lose 24-3 to the 1-9 New England Patriots. I was brought to a low that a fairly well educated young person in his 20's is bound to experience. By this time, I had been told by a professor that I was basically an ignoramus, I had been trying to throw shoes at the mice that brazenly walked across my apartment, I had broken up with a girlfriend without any further prospects looming, and I had picked up my steroid-ridden roommate and his knuckle-dragging drunken friends at 2 am on South Street one too many times. I was liable to trust the power of dreams to endure the hard times, but losing to the hopeless Pats was the first time in my life that I decided that the thing with feathers was just a still life taxidermy filled with cotton. The best the Jets could do was a late Cary Blanchard field goal.

My attitude toward my own creative and academic graduate work was not unlike Jack Torrence's demented diligence in The Shining. I distinctly recall listening to the game on crackling AM while going through a shoe box full of letters, sorting through the vestiges of the last year and a half of my life. Do you remember letters? It's an e-mail, only you compose it on paper and put it in an envelope with the address of the recipient on the outside. There was once an intricate postal system funded by the United States Government that would ensure that your otherwise meaningless correspondence reached its destination. You'd keep letters, too. While waiting for the lifeless 3-8 Jets come to life against a fellow basement dweller, I discovered a small letter from a woman I had known only the year before while working in St. Louis. Do you remember the evening we spent together? I'm here if you need me.

I looked up and realized that never before had I ever really noticed how quickly the night came in late November. I had grown up in New York, yet I had somehow gotten through each winter without sensing the darkness in the soul that the winter night can sometime bring. As a boy on Long Island I had sometimes been mysteriously saddened by the speed with which winter twilight painted its mustard light against the roofs of the houses on the adjacent street, but I was usually running around and playing with friends too much to have thought of it as more than a momentary, passing twinge of sadness. But in my tiny, rodent-infested room in North Philadelphia, I felt as if I were gulping huge swallows of the darkness, feeling it draining my spirit like a bad drunken spell. It was depression, finally manifesting itself as an adult disease, a full-blown ailment passed down from generation to generation, waiting for its moment to strike. And it had. Had I missed something? Who was this woman? Had I even cared about her enough to write back? What kind of a person was I, anyway? Who the hell was I, anyway?

I'm glad I don't think about these things anymore; such thoughts are the property of the time. Lots of people avoid such things at 23, but the 20's can be a beguiling and unhappy sometimes. One thing that hasn't change is the capacity for a Jets' loss to make depression feel even worse. Whether they are 3-8 or 7-3, I fear a Jets loss as much for its effect on me as I do for the team's playoff prospects. This is at least one way of interpreting what it means to be a real fan. Your team's winning makes or breaks you. When the night fell heavily from the sky, and my research work was going nowhere, and I could hear the mice scratching away, preparing for their evening's sojourns, the Jets were down 24-0 going into the fourth quarter. It was a bad day.

On Reggie Williams

It's extraordinary that former Cincinnati linebacker Reggie Williams' story is offered so openly on NFL.com when it testifies to the kind of crippling life an NFL player should expect after the game is done. His recent surgical ordeals and the subsequent infections are horrific. It could be that his courage in the face of his knee replacements make his story poignant and inspiring, especially when Williams says he would play all over again if he had the chance. But nowhere does the NFL mention the fact that players can expect no help from a game whose punishment will require that they will someday move around with a walker while still clinging to middle age. That's the real story.

A What? A "Travesty??"

No surprise that no sooner have the Jets won than Time puts it forth as an example of how overtime doesn't work:

"Just such a travesty unfolded during Thursday night's high-stakes prime-time game between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots. The Jets blew two leads — 24-6 in the first half, and 31-24 with three minutes left in the game — before the Pats forced overtime with a stunning last-second pass from Matt Cassel to Randy Moss. The Patriots had mounted two impressive comebacks and the Jets were visibly deflated.

But New England's momentum quickly disappeared. The Jets won the coin toss and marched down the field to kick a field goal. Give New York credit for scoring, and sure New England could have gotten the ball back if its defense had "won" that particular part of the game. But why shouldn't the NFL give the Pats, and other teams like it, a chance to score too?"

Um, no. Hell, no. At the risk of sounding like some griping, whining, bleeding heart, would the issue have been as redolent had the tables been turned, had the Pats "and other teams like it" won the toss?

Well, lessee, I, uh...

No.